Film to X-rays?

erikred_at_csua asks: "A friend has his film X-rays on loan from the lab but needs to transfer them to digital format so he can take them for a second opinion. What's a reliable (and inexpensive) method of doing this without sacrificing image quality (and thereby rendering the exercise worthless)? Would the old lamp and scanner trick work here, or would there be too many flaws to make it worthwhile? Where could one find a list of places that would do this on the cheap? Since this is to document the progress of arthritis in his back, the level of detail must remain high."

Comments

Don't

[Karma Farmer]

Why the hell can't he just talk to his primary doctor, and ask him how medical professionals share x-rays with each other?

What kind of fucking moron with absolutely no radiology experience whatsoever thinks he can just scan a fucking x-ray and get something acceptable to a radiologist?

Get copies

[Otter]

Most likely he has the rights to the films, but I'd recommend leaving the originals in his record and getting copies made. That's a routine request, and not expensive even if his benefits don't cover it.

I would strongly recommend *not* screwing around with any homebrew methods when his health depends on it.

Re:X-Ray scanners

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. You believe the human eye can discriminate beyond the 600 dpi minimum resolution that even the most inexpensive junk desktop scanners offer. So you are claiming that a human being can spot a significant feature on an xray that has a maximal width of less than 0.5mm.